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Eggs Cocotte, Shinkle
Finely chop three Spanish sweet peppers, place in a frying pan with a teaspoon melted butter, season with a saltspoon salt, and gently fry for five minutes. Evenly divided them in six egg-cocotte dishes, season evenly with half a teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper, and pour a tablespoon fresh cream over the eggs of each dish. Dredge a tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese, equally divided, over them, set in the oven for five minutes, remove and send to the table.
A set of six baked eggs in ramekins, written in the telegraphic style Filippini used throughout — he assumes you know that the eggs go in after the peppers and before the cream, since the text never actually says to break them.
- The missing stepThe text never says to break the eggs, though "the eggs of each dish" assumes them. Divide the fried peppers among the buttered dishes, break the eggs on top — one or two per dish, depending on its capacity — then season, add the cream and the cheese.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. The seasoning here works out to well under a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of white pepper spread across six dishes.
- Egg-cocotte dishesSmall straight-sided porcelain or earthenware pots, roughly 4 oz. Ramekins of that capacity are the direct substitute; custard cups work.
- Spanish sweet peppersFresh mild red peppers, not the jarred pimientos sold under the same name today. If using jarred pimiento, skip the frying and just warm it through, since it is already fully cooked and will turn to paste.
- Oven and water bathNo temperature is given; around 375F is a reasonable modern choice. Oeufs en cocotte are usually baked in a bain-marie, the dishes set in a roasting pan with hot water halfway up their sides, which helps keep the whites tender rather than rubbery. This recipe makes no mention of one.
- Five minutes is not enoughEven in a hot oven, cream-covered eggs in ceramic need 10 to 14 minutes for the whites to set with the yolks still loose. Judge by the whites: opaque and just firm at the edge, with a faint wobble at the centre.
- Cheese quantityOne tablespoon of Parmesan divided six ways is a dusting, not a crust; more would brown before the eggs were cooked.
- YieldSix dishes, which is a first course for six or a light supper for three.
Œufs en cocotte belong to the French repertoire of small baked egg dishes that filled the lighter courses of hotel and club menus around 1900: the cocotte is simply a small pot, from the same word used for the larger cast-iron casseroles, and the dish is defined by the vessel rather than the filling. Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, compiled The International Cook Book (1906) in that milieu, and the second word of the title is most likely a personal name, though that is an inference rather than a certainty. Here the distinguishing mark is the sweet pepper and Parmesan, an Italian gesture inside a French formula, which is roughly what the book's promise of a world's kitchen amounted to in practice.